Alabama Attorney-General Bill Pryor, nominated to the U. S. Eleventh
Circuit Court of Appeals, is facing new opposition to his appointment from
former supporters close to his situation. Former Alabama Governor Fob
James has come out of retirement from public life to file affidavits urging the
Alabama Court of the Judiciary to remove Pryor from his position as prosecutor
against Chief Justice Roy Moore in Moore's up-and-coming suspension trial. The
affidavits of former Governor James and his son raise fundamental questions
about Pryor's integrity and fitness for either the prosecutorial or Eleventh Circuit
job. Doug Phillips of American Vision reports that the former Governor was so
concerned about Pryor's "hypocrisy and dishonesty" that James has decided to
break his years of silence regarding Pryor. Additionally, Phillips has declared that
"I can also say for a certainty that the former Governor was not approached by
any member of the Moore team for this testimony or affidavit."

Affidavit of Forrest H. "Fob" James, Jr.

I am a citizen of the United States and the State of Alabama. I had the
privilege of serving as Governor of Alabama twice.

One of the primary reasons I ran for Governor in 1994 was a forty-year pattern
of illegal acts by the U.S. Supreme Court. Forbidding pre-game prayer by young
athletes, the removal of the 10 commandments from the schools, and the ever-expanding grab for power by the courts, especially the federal courts, concerned
me. I repeatedly spoke on these matters throughout my campaign. The so-called
"equity funding" case in Alabama was an example of judicial arrogance on the
home front that I also vigorously opposed as a candidate for Governor in 1994.

In my second term I had the good fortune to have Jeff Sessions as Attorney-General for a time. After he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he recommended to
me a young man from Mobile named Bill Pryor to replace him. I remember
talking with Bill about Judge Brevard Hand, a federal judge also from Mobile. Bill
spoke highly of Judge Hand and if I remember correctly, a decision the Judge
had made in the Jaffree school prayer case in Mobile during my first term as
Governor. Judge Hand had ruled in that case that the U.S. Supreme Court was
misusing the legal system to achieve its own social agenda, while usurping
authority granted only to the legislative branches of government. As Judge Hand
wrote, "We must give no future generation an excuse to use the same tactic to
further their ends which they think proper under the then political climate as for
instance did Adolph Hitler when he used the court system to further his goals." I
later asked the Judge to swear me in as Governor for a second term in 1995,
which he graciously did.

The main part of my inauguration in January, 1995, was an historical festival with
actors playing the parts of historical figures like George Washington warning of
"change by usurpation" in our government.

I paid more attention to what Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and
Lincoln said about the checks and balances in our legal system, especially as it
relates to checking the power of the judiciary, than to ambitious and dishonest
judges we saw in the 20th century. I talked with Bill Pryor about all this when I
was considering him for the job of Alabama Attorney-General. He impressed me
with his knowledge of these things and provided me with some legal papers on
"nonacquiescence" that he was responsible for while at the Tulane Law School. I
told Bill about my view that constitutional officials needed to challenge the
Supreme Court. For instance, for twenty years my view has been that a
Governor should refuse to allow enforcement of a patently unconstitutional court
order, and force the president to take action one way or the other on the issue. I
don't mean that we should fight anyone with troops. I do mean that we should
use our constitutional authority to force the great issue of the day into the
provinces of all branches of the federal government, not just a judiciary that like
to sweep everything under its own rug where it has nearly exclusive control. Bill

Pryor was aware of my views when I appointed him, because we discussed
these things. Bill had indicated nothing, but his wholehearted support of my
position and these issues at the time.

I have now heard that Bill Pryor is prosecuting Roy Moore before the Court of
the Judiciary for refusing to obey a federal court order to remove the Ten
Commandments from the State Judicial Building. If this is true, Bill 's action today
are utterly contrary to the political and legal convictions he expressed to me. Had
he expressed his present view, I would not have found him qualified to be
Attorney-General of Alabama. The main reason Pryor was appointed was his
understanding, and the ability to express that understanding, well, that a public
official's highest duty was to the Constitution of the United States and not to the
Supreme Court or any other entity.

Affidavit of Forrest H. "Fob" James, III (Son of the
Governor)

I am a lawyer in Birmingham and have been a member of the State Bar of
Alabama since 1982. Yesterday I became aware of a "MOTION FOR
RECUSAL/DISQUALIFICATION OF ATTORNEY GENERAL BILL PRYOR AND
HIS OFFICE" filed before the COURT OF THE JUDICIARY OF ALABAMA in the
matter of ROY S. MOORE, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF
ALABAMA; CASE NO. 33. Since I have personal knowledge of some factual
issues raised by the Motion, I may well have an ethical duty as a member of the
Alabama Bar to come forward with testimony on these issues.

My father, Forrest H. "Fob" James, Jr., served as governor of Alabama from
1979-1983 and from 1995-1999. In late 1996, when Governor James was
consider whether to appoint Bill Pryor as Attorney General of Alabama, the
Governor met with Senator Jeff Sessions in the Governor's office in Montgomery.
Senator Sessions was strongly encouraging the Governor to appoint Pryor to be
his replacement. During their meeting I entered the room and joined Governor
James and Senator Sessions. No one else was present to my recollection.

I raised the issue with Governor James and Senator Sessions of whether
Pryor would support Governor James in contempt-of-court situations if the
Governor, as he had stated in his campaign and on many occasions to me
personally, refused to enforce or prevented enforcement of certain federal or
state court orders, especially in the church-state arena. At the time I had made
the Governor aware of an Alabama circuit court in Montgomery that had recently
issued an order prohibiting then circuit court Judge Roy Moore in Gadsen from
having public prayer in his courtroom. Judge Moore had publicly indicated he
would not obey the other circuit court's order. The Montgomery circuit court,
which had issued the order prohibiting courtroom prayer, also had before it a
"Motion to Reconsider" by the ACLU aimed at having the Ten Commandments
removed from Judge Moore's courtroom as well (which the Montgomery circuit
court had initially declined to do).

In response to my question about defying court orders and contempt-of-court
situations, Senator Sessions, with great emphasis, said words to the effect that
the Governor could find no one who would stand with him more strongly in such
situations than Bill Pryor. After Senator Sessions left, or soon thereafter, I
counseled the Governor to sit down with Pryor himself and specifically discuss
this matter with him, and also to discuss the same thing with the other candidate
under consideration for the Attorney-General's job, State Senator John Amari.
The Governor told me he would talk with them about it.

Within a short time thereafter, no more than a few days, the Governor told me
he had discussed this matter with Amari, who agreed that the judges were "out
of control." The Governor said Amari did not offer commentary beyond that on
the subject. The Governor also told me that he discussed the same matter with
Pryor, and that Pryor indicated his support of the Governor. The Governor also
said that Pryor supplied him with material from the Tulane Law Review, of which
Pryor had been editor-in-chief, on the subject of "non-acquiescence" to orders of
the U.S. Supreme Court. A senior advisor to the Governor, Champ Lyons,
indicated to me at the time, it was "fortuitous" for Pryor that he had been able to
supply such cogent material to the Governor on the issue of central importance
to him. The Governor informed me that he was going to appoint Pryor, which he
did in early 1997.

Thereafter, in about February, 1997, the Montgomery circuit court (referenced
above in paragraph 3) ordered then Gadsen circuit Judge Roy Moore to remove
the Ten Commandments from his courtroom. In response Governor James
publicly stated that the order to remove the Commandments would not be carried
out in Alabama without "force of arms," that is, without the President of the
United States federalizing the national guard or otherwise taking control of the
situation. Within the next several weeks, the Governor hosted a conference in his
offices for attorneys involved in the litigation, including the Governor's attorneys,
Pryor and his staff attorneys, Judge Moore and others. At the conference, I
raised the question of what legal position would be taken, if after all appeals
were exhausted, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against us, and the Governor
refused to obey the Supreme Court's order. Bill Pryor said in response, "I will be
with him." This is the last time that I personally know, or was told by the
Governor, that Pryor was willing to stand with Governor James in disobeying a
U.S. Supreme Court order.

I also want to say that at the conference hosted by the Governor, Bill Pryor
was in this room in the capacity of an attorney defending Judge Roy Moore, and
Pryor was privy to all of the analysis of the legal issues by Judge Moore and the
other lawyers in the room. At the time Judge Moore had already publicly stated
that he would never obey a court order to remove the Ten Commandments from
his courtroom. Judge Moore spoke candidly about his belief in the issue, and the
attorneys present discussed the legal strategies that would be used to defend
Judge Moore. Every attorney in the room, so far as I could tell, expressed
nothing but admiration for Judge Moore for the stand that he had taken. And as I
have said, the discussion included the issue, raised by me, of what legal position
would be taken if the Governor chose, as he said he intended, to prevent routine
enforcement of any court order requiring removal of the Ten Commandments
from the courtroom.

During a break at the conference, I personally asked Judge Moore if he was
willing to lose all that owned, or to go to jail, or both, over this issue, He told me
that he was.

Mindful of my duty to give as accurate an account as possible of the facts of
which I have personal knowledge, I must also testify that by the end of
Governor's James last term, Mr. Pryor's posture on the matters above had
changed substantially. To inform the Court of the Judiciary of the context for
Governor James' position during these events, which I pertinent to issues raised
in the Motion For Recusal, I attach hereto as Exhibit "A" a short Brief filled in the
Alabama Supreme Court by Governor's office in September, 1997. The Brief was
written by then lawyer Champ Lyon's and myself, and sent out under the
signature of the Governor's legal adviser. It concludes:

The preeminent duty of "judges in every state" is to be bound by "this
Constitution," that is the Constitution as written and as legally amended under
the authority of the "people of the United States" alone, U.S. Constitution, Article
VI. All other judicial duties and judicial precedents are subordinate to this
mandate, on which the whole American structure rests. Marbury v. Madison, 5
U.S. 174-177, 179-180. The U.S. Supreme Court's church-state decisions
purposely reject this mandate. If other courts saw to do have the will to uphold it,
this mandate will be lost, and the nation will be given over to lawlessness. If the
justices of the U.S. Supreme Court wish to install themselves as a super-legislature to oversee this country's social policies on every conceivable subject,
with no limit to their power, and no fidelity to their oath of office, then they should
be left to enforce their own decisions without the involvement or assistance of
constitutional officers who faithfully discharge their duties of loyalty to the
Constitution as required by their oaths of office. . . .Although I would like to claim
authorship of the language emphasized in the quote above, I must attribute
these incisive and seasoned words to a lawyer who is now an Associate Justice
of the Alabama Supreme Court, Champ Lyons.

The last conversation I recall with Bill Pryor occurred late in Governor's
James' last term after the Governor signed Alabama's "partial birth" abortion law.
When the law passed, Mr. Pryor instructed Alabama district attorneys not to
enforce the law as to pre-viable fetuses. In my view, this gutted the law and
defeated its very purpose. An equivalent to Pryor's actions would be for U.S.
Attorney-General John Ashcroft to instruct U.S. attorneys not to enforce the Act
of Congress on partial Birth Abortion that Congress passed only yesterday, and
the President is due to sign shortly, as to "pre-viable fetuses." I can say with
confidence that by the time of this conversation with Pryor, Pryor's legal and
political views had undergone a total reversal from the views he expressed for
the first few months after his appointment as Attorney-General. I also know that
at some point after my last conversation with Mr. Pryor, he said, as a matter of
public record, that his ultimate career goal was to gain for himself a federal
appellate judgeship, I will be glad to supplement the testimony on any of the
matters above if the court of the Judiciary so desires.

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